Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994

The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations. What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had. What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn't stay the course.

1971 - Never a Dull Moment: Rock's Golden Year

The '60s ended a year late - on New Year's Eve 1970, when Paul McCartney initiated proceedings to wind up The Beatles. Music would never be the same again. The next day would see the dawning of a new era. Nineteen seventy-one saw the release of more monumental albums than any year before or since and the establishment of a pantheon of stars to dominate the next 40 years - Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Marvin Gaye, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Rod Stewart, the solo Beatles and more.

Set the Boy Free

Johnny Marr was born in 1960s Manchester to Irish immigrant parents and knew from an early age that he would be a musician. Forming his first band at 13, Marr spent his teenage years on the council estates of Wythenshawe playing guitar, devouring pop culture and inventing his own musical style. It wasn't until the early '80s, when Marr turned up on the doorstep of a singer named Steven Patrick Morrissey, that both a unique songwriting partnership and the group recognised as one of the most iconic bands of all time were formed.

The Age of Bowie

Respected arts commentator Paul Morley, one of the team who curated the highly successful retrospective exhibition for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, David Bowie Is..., constructs the definitive story of Bowie that explores how he worked, played, aged, structured his ideas, invented the future, and entered history as someone who could and would never be forgotten.

Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

Inspired by the attitude and energy of punk, Peter Hook and school friend Bernard Sumner joined lead-singer and lyricist Ian Curtis and drummer Stephen Morris, and with some cobbled-together instruments, they created their own unique sound. In 1980 they had released two albums and were on the cusp of touring America when Ian Curtis committed suicide. In this no-holds-barred account, Peter Hook gives us the inside story of life with Joy Division. He talks with candour and reflection about Curtis's suicide and covers the band's friendships and fall-outs....

Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys

Coming of age in Thatcher's Britain in the late '70s and early '80s was really tough, especially if you lived in Crawley. But against the grinding austerity, social unrest and suburban boredom, the spark of rebellion that was punk set alight three young men who would become one of the most revered and successful bands of their generation: The Cure. Cured is a memoir by Lol Tolhurst, one of the founding imaginary boys, who met Robert Smith when they were six.

That Close

Suggs is one of pop music's most enduring and likeable figures. Read by the author himself with the assured style and wit of a natural raconteur, this hugely entertaining and insightful autobiography takes you from his colourful early life on a North London council estate, through the heady early days of Punk and 2-Tone, to the eighties, where Madness became the biggest selling singles band of the decade.

Porcelain: A Memoir

From one of the most interesting and iconic musicians of our time, a piercingly tender, funny and harrowing account of the path from suburban poverty and alienation to a life of beauty, squalor and unlikely success out of the NYC club scene of the late '80s and '90s.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Digging Up Mother: A Love Story

Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.

Born to Run

In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl's halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That's how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to this audio the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs.

Speed of Sound

Thomas Dolby's hit songs 'She Blinded Me with Science' and 'Hyperactive!' catapulted him to international fame in the early '80s. A pioneer of new wave and electronica, Thomas combined a love for invention with a passion for music, and the result was a new sound that defined an era of revolutionary music. But as record company politics overshadowed the joy of performing, Thomas found a surprising second act.

The Secret History of Twin Peaks

The Secret History of Twin Peaks enlarges the world of the original series, placing the unexplained phenomena that unfolded there into a vastly layered, wide-ranging history, beginning with the journals of Lewis and Clark and ending with the shocking events that closed the finale. The perfect way to get in the mood for the upcoming Showtime series.

It's So Easy: And Other Lies

In 1984, at the age of 20, Duff McKagan left his native Seattle - partly to pursue music, but mainly to get away from a host of heroin overdoses then-decimating his closest group of friends in the local punk scene. In LA only a few weeks and still living in his car, he answered a want ad for a bass player placed by someone who identified himself only as "Slash." Soon after, the most dangerous band in the world was born. Guns N' Roses went on to sell more than 100 million albums worldwide.

Hero: David Bowie

His music thrilled the generation it was written for and has entertained and inspired every generation since. Hero: David Bowie is an exploration of the man behind the myths and the makeup told from the very beginning. Respected music journalist and biographer Lesley-Ann Jones knew David Jones from the days before fame, when he was a young musician starting out, frustrated by an industry that wouldn't give him a break and determined to succeed at whatever cost.

Autobiography

Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in Manchester on May 22nd 1959. Singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Smiths (1982-1987), Morrissey has been a solo artist for twenty-six years, during which time he has had three number 1 albums in England in three different decades.Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with the Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David Bowie, Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull, Chrissie Hynde, Thelma Houston, My Chemical Romance and Christy Moore, amongst others.

Gangsters and Goodfellas

"In 1980, my life as a 'Goodfella' came to an end... I traded my Brioni and Armani suits for T-shirts and jeans. I became a normal citizen. I became Joe Schmoe," says Henry Hill, author of Gangsters and Goodfellas and subject of Wiseguy, which was the inspiration for the blockbuster film Goodfellas. After a quarter of a century of silence, Hill can finally tell us the rest of the story, Gangsters and Goodfellas picks up where Wiseguy left off, taking readers on the crazy ride of Henry's life....

Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, written and read by Elvis Costello. In a career spanning four decades, Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) has made himself a huge reputation through his tunes, lyrics and occasional bad behaviour. Now, for the first time, he is telling his story.

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat? Ian Mortimer shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. He sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking you to the Middle Ages. The result is the most astonishing social history book you are ever likely to read: evolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail.

Ubik

Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business - deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time.

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires

Genovese, Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, and Lucchese. For decades these Five Families ruled New York and built the American Mafia (or Cosa Nostra) into an underworld empire. Today, the Mafia is an endangered species, battered and beleaguered by aggressive investigators, incompetent leadership, betrayals, and generational changes that produced violent, unreliable leaders and recruits.

4 3 2 1

On March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four Fergusons made of the same genetic material, four boys who are the same boy, will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and friendships and intellectual passions contrast.

No Cunning Plan

Sir Tony Robinson is a much-loved actor, presenter and author with a stellar career lasting over 50 years. Now, in his long-awaited autobiography, he reveals how the boy from South Woodford went from child stardom in the first stage production of Oliver!, a pint-size pickpocket desperately bleaching his incipient moustache, to comedy icon Baldrick, the loyal servant and turnip aficionado in Blackadder.

Not Dead Yet

Phil Collins gained fame as both the drummer and the lead singer for Genesis and continues to enjoy worldwide success today. He's one of only three recording artists who have sold over 100 million albums both as solo artists and separately as principal members of bands - the other two being Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson.

Publisher's Summary

Mojo Magazine's book of the year.

The Hollywood Brats are the greatest band you've never heard of. Recording one near-perfect punk album in 1974, they were tragically ahead of their time.

With only a guitar, a tatty copy of Melody Maker and his template for the perfect band, Andrew Matheson set out, in 1971, to make musical history. His band, The Hollywood Brats, were prepunk prophets - uncompromising, ultrathin, wild, untamable and outrageous. But thrown into the crazy world of the 1970s London music scene, the Brats ultimately fell afoul of the crooks and heavies that ran it and an industry that just wasn't ready for them.

Directly inspiring the London SS, the Clash, Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols, The Hollywood Brats imploded too soon to share the glory. Punk's answer to Withnail and I, Sick on You is a startling, funny and brilliantly entertaining period memoir about never quite achieving success, despite flying so close to greatness.

I must confess I had never heard of The Hollywood Brats and got this audiobook for its title and because I am a big fan of punk rock in the mid/late 70's and like finding out about how punk started. This book is absolutely brilliant from start to finish, it has you cringing, laughing and most of all glued to the storyline.Since listening to it I have been on YouTube and listened to some of the music, it's pretty good.Also I have Some of The Boys early stuff and didn't realise "Sick on you" was a Brats song until near the end of book.One of my favourite bits was when A couple of The Brats met Malcolm McClaren, Vivien Westwood and the early Sex Pistols along with Mick Jones and Tony James. Andrew Matheson's account of this time and hanging out with the London SS for a brief spell was absolutely hilarious.The Hollywood Brats missed so many opportunities due to their disregard for anything and everything, they had the punk attitude that's for sure.Thank you Andrew for sharing this experience, it was absolutely fantastic to listen to.

Nearly lost interest towards the beginning when we had some detail about musical instruments etc - I am not really excited by different types of guitar .

However, this is fabulously written - very poetic in places but rarely overdone. And the delivery,by the front man of the band itself, is exactly what you'd expect of someone who was clearly born to perform.

Just about everything - the story is moving and funny, infuriating in places, and just plain laugh out loud in others. Go find the LP after listening to this.

What does Andrew Matheson bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

His own inimitable insights and a theatrical performance - almost as buzzsaw as the Brats music

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

In this band, no one will hear you play

Any additional comments?

Simply one of the best audiobooks you will hear in a long time. The performance matches the story, which in turn matches the music. It take you back to 70s London and the squalor and struggle of trying to get on the musical map. Bravo Andrew and thank you!